Part 7
March From The East
(D+1) DTG:
January 25th ….2012 LOCATION:
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE in the United States and unspecified locations in the Middle East and Turkey. SITUATION:
The world is in shock…. but elsewhere, the unimaginable and overwhelming apocalyptic events taking place across the world are a sign for others to begin their quest for power, revenge and world domination.
For those with knowledge of Dragon’s Breath, the detonation of a nuclear device in Washington DC had left them all open-mouthed, but they knew it to be the signal they had been waiting for and, by the 25th January 2012, more than 1.7 million Arabs were on the march. These were the first of a combined force from an initial 3 million troops generated by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt and Iraq. Iraqi Shiite militia groups had provided a large source of manpower and these had trained extensively in Iran, ready to fight alongside their Iranian brethren. Equipped with the latest weaponry from Russia and China, their leaders were sending their forces to engage the West in a war designed to eradicate once and for all what they saw as Western interference in Arab lands, which they believed undermined Islam. For the militant Arab nations it was the start of a journey that was to end with the ultimate destruction of what they called the Great Satan. Iran would finally be avenged and Israel would be alone and vulnerable in the region with the world witnessing, at long last, the strength gained from Arab unity.
In the United States, 12 elected senators had escaped the inferno in Washington DC by being out of the city for various reasons and now 15hrs after America’s worst ever atrocity, they found themselves
underground at Edwards Air Force Base in California. They were the only ones left from a privileged group of people- the elected few. One thing was certain, the President and all her immediate government officials were dead, along with more than 320,000 others and God knows how many more injured. There were no past presidents alive or capable of stepping into the breech, so to speak; therefore, it would have to be decided between the remaining 12 who was to be nominated President, as there had to be order and, a response to the atrocity.
The magnitude of what had occurred had not yet sunk in and the nation was in complete shock. That nation would need strong leadership today and it would have to come from the group present, for the short term at least. The alternative was a military figure but the majority of high-ranking military personnel present dismissed this. It was General William C Bracken, the Chief of Staff , who had strongly suggested that a military figure should not head up the government because there were elected politicians still alive; as he put it, ‘It had to be an elected civilian official, otherwise democracy would fail the country when it needed it the most’.
The vote was simple and without recrimination with the 12 men present only having to write down who their nomination was before he with the most votes was passed as President. He with the second most votes would be Vice President. Present in the room were 7 Republicans and 5 Democrats.
Halfway across the world, and with the world’s media focused entirely on the events in the United States and Europe, the Iranian 11th Army Group was already into Southern Turkey with its columns spreading out behind it for mile upon mile. Included in its inventory and controlled by the Revolutionary Guards were large numbers of its Shahab-1, Shahab–2 and Shahab–3 ballistic missiles along with their newer cousin, the Ghader missile. All have a nuclear carrying capability but these were solely fitted with conventional warheads. Produced by the Hemmat Industries Group Factory (an important branch of Iran’s Aerospace Industries Group) the Shahab missiles have a range of 1,300 to 1,900km (800-1,100 miles) and the Ghader 2,500 to 3,000km (1,150-1,850 miles). Once they entered the Balkans… Paris and even the United Kingdom would be in range.